Catholic Publication calls for ‘LGBT Saints’

Vast swathes of the American populace celebrated the recent Pride Month, but many American Christians remain divided on how to respond to a society that has abandoned traditional Christian teaching. American Catholics in particular are challenged with this endeavor, as the Roman Catholic Church continues to clash more and more with American societal norms, especially in the areas of sexual ethics and marriage.

One Catholic news outlet fired off a new volley in the culture war. America, a Jesuit publication not new to controversy, released a June 2 article titled “The Catholic Church Needs L.G.B.T Saints” and authored by Associate Editor Jim McDermott, who identifies as a homosexual.

McDermott expresses his love for various images of saints, surrounding Christ and Mary with halos over their heads. This is then followed by an underhanded comment about the Catholic Church’s supposed whiteness: “But for me, it is also reassuring to see them all gathered together. Particularly if they include more than just celibate white men, it feels like a glimpse of the kingdom of God, a home where there is a place for all of us.”

The America editor then expresses sadness over the fact that, while he has been able to find tapestries and images containing men and women saints of various ethnicities, there was not one saint featured that was LGBT.

McDermott goes on with the mindset that Catholic teaching on the matter is either wrong or outdated, and that those Catholics who still believe homosexual practice is a sin are just not in the right mindset.

“No matter how much work Pope Francis, various bishops, clergy and others have done to try and normalize the place of L.G.B.T. people in the church, the fact is, for many Catholics of a certain age, being L.G.B.T. still seems wrong or disobedient” McDermott writes.

It is important to note that although the Catholic Church condemns homosexual acts as “intrinsically disordered” and contrary to both Scripture and Tradition, it also recognizes that people do genuinely struggle with these inclinations, and can still live a life of celibacy in the model of Jesus Christ.

Nevertheless, the article goes on to name various figures who performed great acts and either were or suspected to be gay. McDermott asserts that even certain saints canonized by the Catholic Church had possible LGBT orientations. He includes in this list the famous Catholic convert from Anglicanism, St. John Henry Newman, and his companion Father Ambrose St. John. The two were lifelong friends who ended up being buried in the same grave. Newman pursued a life a celibacy from the time he was fifteen years old, and as the author of this article points out, if wanting to buried with a dear friend is evidence of a homosexual relationship, then we would have to conclude that C.S Lewis and his brother, who are buried together, were in an incestuous relationship and that G.K Chesterton was unfaithful towards his wife with secretary Dorothy Collins, who was beloved by the Chestertons and buried in the same grave as the Chesterton family.

The article concludes with McDermott comparing LGBT-identifying Catholics with the biblical Hagar, saying that “we are just guests in the story of salvation” and often “exiled to some other land”, repeating the call for recognized and canonized openly LGBT-identifying Catholic saints.

The issue of homosexuality is one of many tearing the Catholic Church asunder, particularly in the United States. Despite the Catechism’s teachings, a Gallup poll found that a majority of U.S. Catholics have consistently favored legal gay marriage for the past decade. It also found that among frequent church-going Catholics, support for homosexual unions was lower than those who didn’t it attend as often: “56% of Catholics who say that religion is “very important” to their life support same-sex marriage, while 78% of Catholics who say religion is “fairly important” support it. Eighty-seven percent of Catholics who say religion is “not very important” to their lives support gay marriage.”

America has made controversial moves before as it pushes heterodox views on Catholic morals. In 2019, the magazine published an article titled “The Catholic Case for Communism” that came under harsh criticism in traditional Catholic circles. As the article from OnePeterFive notes, the author of the piece had frequently voiced his support for socialist and communist organizations, ideologies that have been roundly condemned by popes from Pope Leo XIII to Pope St. John Paul II.

One editor at large with America is James Martin, S.J., a Jesuit priest appointed by Pope Francis in 2017 to be the Vatican’s Secretariat of Communications. He has been roundly criticized for his ambiguous statements on Catholic teaching and evasive tactics, with a famous Catholic archbishop cautioning Catholics on the teachings that Martin espouses.